From: The Encyclopedia of Canada's Peoples/Aboriginals: Tsimshian/Deanna Nyce
Traditionally, the education system drew on the resources of the extended family, with different members playing designated roles in the raising and educating of children. In their earliest years, children were cared for by their grandparents and their parents. Their grandparents taught the children practical skills, values, and proper behaviour. The chief or the matriarch of the housegroup instructed the children in their house’s history – their adawx – and in the laws of the people.
As they grew older, children accompanied their parents and other family members throughout their territories, learning the names and boundaries of the land and assisting in the gathering and preparation of food and of all the other materials needed by the housegroup. At puberty, they entered the ceremonial life of the community and began the training that would allow them to take their place in the social and political functions of the village. At this point, aunts and uncles played a key role, assisting their nieces and nephews in various rites of passage and in their preparation for marriage and the adult responsibilities ahead.
This system of education was undermined by the church-sponsored shift to single-family homes, legislated schooling (especially residential schools), and participation in the mainstream economy by adult members of the extended family. From the beginning, there was both resistance to and acceptance of the idea of schooling. Those opposed saw it as an attempt to draw the younger generation away from their own society; others, who felt restricted by their inability to deal effectively with non-native institutions, saw it as an opportunity for the young to master the ways of the new sociopolitical systems in order to facilitate the long-term goal of re-establishing control over their lives. Both points of view continue today, with community-run schools in a number of villages, an immersion school in Gitwangak, and the establishment in the Nass valley in 1975 of School District 92, Nisga’a. There are increasing numbers of native university and college graduates in the fields of education, law, business administration, resource management, and social sciences, and, at the same time, non-native educational institutions are showing a growing awareness that teaching the languages, cultures, and histories of the Nisga’a, Gitksan, and Tsimshian will not only enrich their own programs but are essential for successful education of people from these communities.
Since 1973, a number of locally controlled schools and school boards have been established. Among the Nisga’a, school district 92 and the Wilp Wilxo’oskwhl Nisga’a have both been successful in their areas of responsibility. In Gitksan communities, initiatives include the Gitksan-Wit’suwit’en Education Society and the Gitwangak Education Society, both of which offer immersion programs in Gitksan language and culture. Among the Tsimshian, there is a successful Tsimshian curriculum-development program attached to provincial school district 52 (where 47 percent of students are native); the North Coast Tribal Council Education Centre has offered a language-teacher education program through which two groups of students have already received their B.Ed. degrees; and the Northwest Band Social Workers Association, comprised of students from numerous tribal areas, has a successful B.S.W. program in partnership with the University of Victoria.
The Nisga’a, Gitksan, and Tsimshian languages were initially used in the work of missionaries, and there are church liturgies and hymns in each that were developed a century ago. However, Skuuxs, the language of the Southern Tsimshian, is virtually extinct; today, only two people in the community of Kitasoo (Klemtu) retain limited knowledge of the vocabulary. In the communities in which Southern Tsimshian was once spoken, it has been replaced by Coast Tsimshian. The languages of the Tsimshian, Nisga’a, and Gitksan are still spoken by 25 to 30 percent of community members, and many children are now learning their language in their communities. Virtually all community members also speak English. Language-revitalization efforts have been undertaken in all communities, and the languages are now taught in immersion programs as well as being included in the curriculum of primary and secondary schools. Nisga’a was taught in the Indian Day Schools in the Nass valley in the 1970s. When school district 92 was established, a structured curriculum of Nisga’a reaching from kindergarten to grade 12 was instituted. The first school program in Coast Tsimshian began in Hartley Bay in 1972 and the language is now taught in all communities. There is currently an immersion primary school in Gitksan in Gitwangak.
In addition to these programs for school children, there have been a number of workshops over the past two decades to assist adults seeking to attain fluency or literacy in one of these languages. In 1994 a full-degree program in Nisga’a studies was established through a partnership between the University of Northern British Columbia and the Wilp Wilxo’oskwhl Nisga’a. University-credit courses offered since 1995 in Coast Tsimshian have drawn a large number of Tsimshian people into post-secondary classrooms. The Tsimshian, Gitksan, and Nisga’a use a common orthography and actively promote both the written and spoken forms of the language.
Since the Gitksan, Tsimshian, and Nisga’a form a large proportion of the regional population, First Nations issues receive extensive coverage in the local and regional media, though almost always from a nonnative perspective. The Nisga’a newspaper Hak’ak’a (The Key), established in 1891 and now published by the Nisga’a Tribal Council, provides an alternative medium of communication that is available both inside and outside the communities. Additionally, there are publications such as the Native Voice (Vancouver, 1946–), published by the Native Brotherhood of British Columbia, as well as newsletters produced by all of the tribal councils. The latter have their own communications divisions along with a presence on the Internet.
The practice of visiting always served to transmit information between villages, and, recently, CB radios, VHF radios, telephones, and now the Internet have added the ability to communicate beyond the local community. In the past two decades, each of the tribal councils has established programs to facilitate internal communication as well as to present their views to the external media. Community cable programs, hour-long documentaries aired on national networks, newsletters, annual conventions, informational brochures and posters, and coffee-table books have all been published under the auspices of these organizations. Northern Native Broadcasting offers both information and entertainment programs to communities throughout the northwest area and is linked to a national network.
The annual conventions held by each tribal council are especially effective venues for internal communication; these often attract large numbers of participants and include reports by all of the committees and agencies reporting to the council. There are also special education and health meetings held at various points in the year. The one occasion that brings together the most people from Gitksan, Nisga’a, and Tsimshian communities (as well as many other First Nations) is the All Native Basketball Tournament, started in 1947 and now held annually in Prince Rupert early each February. The feast system continues to have significance as a means of political communication and events have increased rapidly in frequency and size over the past decade as communities revive traditions that were once suppressed. Feasts have been used in recent years to deal with the complex issue of overlapping land claims by different communities, and totem-pole raisings are once again events of public celebration across the region.
